Friday, September 30, 2016

Items below are all available online at the great site Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, co-produced by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress. So far there's nothing in the way of a critical notice that I can find about The Confidence-Man (1857) in either the Herald or the Tribune. Most but not all of the critical notices below are transcribed or listed in Herman Melville: The Contemporary Reviews (CR), edited by Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker. As mentioned in the previous melvilliana post Early favorable notices of Typee and Omoo, CR lacks the New York Herald items about Typee and Omoo. Also not listed in CR: the notice and excerpts of "Israel Potter" in Putnam's, given in the New York Herald on August 6, 1854.

Married "In Boston, on the 4th inst., by the Rev. Dr. Young, Mr.
HERMAN MELVILLE, of New York, to Miss ELIZABETH K. SHAW, daughter of
Chief Justice Shaw, of the former place." --New York Herald - August 6, 1847

"CHARLES LE CHAUVE" in the New York Herald - September 4, 1853; Notices among Berkshire celebrities "Herman Melville who, if he would understand to write about the things of this world, would be as popular as Dickens, but whose later works are such that neither gods nor men, nor columns can tolerate. He lives at Pittsfield, and has a beautiful place there."

THE NEW ROBINSON CRUSOE.—A very singular and extraordinary book has just been published, by Herman Melville, brother to Gansevoort Melville, Secretary of the American legation in London, describing a captivity which he underwent on one of the South Sea Islands. Some of the scenes are most exciting, equalling those depicted by the celebrated Defoe. The book is written with great elegance and perspicuity, and would appear at first to be fabulous, but we are assured, from the best sources, that the book describes, throughout, nothing but sober facts. It has received a variety of criticisms from the London journals, and also by those in this country, and some appear to doubt whether it is not fictitious.

New Books.

OMOO, by Herman Melville, author of Typee—Harper and Brothers.—This work is destined to create as much excitement in the literary world as Typee did. It is full of incidents and adventures among the natives of the South Sea Islands, admirably connected, and written in an easy off hand manner that charms the reader. We will be very much mistaken if this work do not reach half a dozen editions. We cannot refrain from giving the following graphic description of an outbreak of the crew of the ship on which our author was on board.

OUTBREAK OF THE CREW.

[Excerpts all of Omoo, Chapter 24 from "The purpose of Bembo had been made known to the men generally by the watch…." to "Indeed, no one but Jermin could have prevented this murder."]

Thursday, September 29, 2016

In Young America: The Flowering of Democracy in New York City, Edward L. Widmer cites the unsigned editorial on "England and America" in The Literary World for June 19, 1847, noting the suggestive connection between the description of the English as a "strange insular ishmaelitish people" and the language of Loomings in Moby-Dick. The distinguished historian attributes the "England and America" piece to Evert A. Duyckinck as presumed editor. Duyckinck was "rabidly American" enough (according to W. A. Jones) for the patriotic endeavor. And I see the author of "England and America" liked the word "Jesuitical" which Duyckinck would use in reviewingMelville's Pierre. It's worth pointing out, however, that Evert A. Duyckinck was not editor when "England and America" was published in The Literary World.

Charles Fenno Hoffman took over from Duyckinck as editor of The Literary World beginning in May 1847.

New York Courier and Enquirer - April 30, 1847

Hoffman served as editor of The Literary World from May 1847 to October 1848.

In the early part of 1847
Mr. Duyckinck undertook the editorship of the Literary World, a weekly
journal, designed as a vehicle for the best criticism on books and art,
and the independent and impartial treatment of all topics relating to
the cultivation of letters. The paper was hardly established before he
resigned the editorial control to Mr. Charles Fenno Hoffman; but, about a
year later, resumed it in connection with his brother George, then just
returned from an extended tour in Europe, and by their united efforts
it was carried forward with a single eye to the truest interests of a
true literature. In the opening article of October 7, 1848, the number
of the journal which marked the resumption of its control by Mr.
Duyckinck, he concludes a striking summary of the aims of its
conductors...." --Evert Augustus Duyckinck: His Life, Writings and Influence

Excerpts from Melville's Omoo had appeared during Duyckinck's short first reign, but the full and favorable review of Omoo was published in the May 8, 1847 issue of The Literary World when Hoffman was editor.

As editor of The Literary World Charles Fenno Hoffman had just reviewed Omoo. Maybe Hoffman also wrote arrestingly of an "insular ishmaelitish people" in the editorial on "England and America." The main job of the June 19, 1847 editorial (whoever wrote it) was to defend and argue against British criticisms of supposed atrocities committed by American soldiers during the Mexican War.

Miscellany.

ENGLAND AND AMERICA.—“It is always more in sorrow than in anger (says a very English writer, in a London weekly of May 15th), that we regard the misdeeds of the Americans. Owning with them a common origin, connected with them by the ties of blood, we are sensible of a participation in their disgraces. Their misconduct is a reproach to the whole Anglo-Saxon family.”

The feeling here indicated upon the part of the British branch of Anglo-Saxonhood towards the Alleghanic type of the same race, is (much to our sympathizing regret) troubling the heart of England exceedingly in this her latter day. Those who deem it hypocritical, or who think that our worthy sister of Albion frets herself unfruitfully about the evil doings of her brother of Alleghan, should remember how often we too have recoiled in horror and disgust when tracing her murderous course in India. We felt that our blood alliance with her race made us as it were co-sharers in the reproach with which mankind must visit her manifold atrocities. Let no friend of universal philanthropy, then, take exception to the tone of stupid arrogance and matchless hypocrisy, that the uncharitable and the blind of heart may insist upon detecting in the following passages from the same article.

"But chiefly on a ground higher than that of mere consanguinity do we view with regret those acts, by which the fair fame of America is tarnished, and her name become a by-word among nations."

Now do let the irritated American, who kindles with wrath at this suggestion of his country’s name becoming “a by-word among nations,” let him only reﬂect how at the very moment, “on higher grounds than that of mere consanguinity,” his indignation is roused at every arrival from England, when he reads of the despicable meanness with which the awful consequences of her centuries of ﬂagitious crime in Ireland are met by our Anglo-Saxon brothers of the isles. Let him reﬂect, we say, upon this, and while he scouts at the free British Constitution as a hollow mockery, and mourns for outraged humanity generally, his mind will be in a state of sympathetic condolence with his Anglo-Saxon brother, as he peruses the following plaint in continuation of the above:

“We lament her crimes, principally because they bring discredit on the principles of her constitution; because they are a scandal to the cause of liberty; because they give occasion to its enemies to triumph. We see how readily they are seized upon by the advocates of despotism, and held up as exhibiting the failure of the great experiment of free institutions. The American system of government is a glorious theory, of which, by the opponents of popular progress, these delinquencies are adduced in scornful refutation. To American dishonesty, and American slavery, the absolutist and bigot point in conﬁrmation of their creed. They cite Lynch Law as the consequence of trusting a people with freedom. A like handle has been furnished to them by the selfishness and rapacity which dictated the Mexican invasion; and still further have their hands been strengthened by the mode in which it has been carried on.”

A mode we Americans are driven to confess not much better than that pursued by our Anglo Saxon brothers towards the Chinese, a few years since, and almost as painful as that which they now “carry on” towards the Caffres. Alas! our English friend undervalues the tie of “mere consanguinity,” for naught but that bond could make two nations thus sympathetic in their conduct, and their humane views of that conduct, when its consequences become irreparable. But let us follow our clear-breasted, liberal-viewed brother, a little further:

"In general, the atrocities of what is called Civilized warfare have been modified by some sentiment of humanity. Their inherent murderousness has been palliated by a certain show of mercy, a qualified forbearance, under the names of honor and chivalry. There was a mutual agreement that men should conﬁne themselves to the slaughtering of fellow men. It was understood that the work of butchery should not extend to the massacre of unoffending women and children. To spare neither sex nor age was a barbarity of which none were supposed capable but savages. Did we merely know that the cruelties enacted at Vera Cruz had been committed by Americans, we might not be surprised. We should conclude that their perpetrators were the ferocious tribes who scalp and roast their victims alive. The wild Indians, who dance round their victims at the stake, might be judged capable of warring upon Womanhood and infancy. But no! The destroyers of the weak and the defenceless, the besiegers of boudoirs, they who bombarded drawing-rooms and nurseries, were American citizens."

Full as much at least as those, who the other day rained their grape-shot from “that bridge” upon the ﬂying SIKHS, until the river beneath ran blood, were English subjects—were the same men, whose brutal and fiend-like deeds at Badajoz and Ciudad Rodrigo sicken with horror each reader of Napier‘s historic page.*

[Footnote: *Badajoz, Ciudad-Rodrigo, and we may add St. Sebastian, "where," as
Alison relates, "while the wretched inhabitants, driven from house to
house, as the conﬂagration devoured their dwellings, were soon huddled
together in one quarter, where they fell a prey to the unbridled
passions of the soldiery. Attempts were at first made by the British
ofﬁcers to extinguish the ﬂames, but they proved vain amid the general
confusion which prevailed; and soon the soldiers broke into the burning
houses, pillaged them of the most valuable articles they contained, and
rolling numerous spirit casks into the streets, with frantic shouts
emptied them of their contents, till vast numbers sank down like savages
motionless. some lifeless, from the excess. Carpets, tapestry, beds,
silks and satins, wearing apparel, jewelry, watches, and every thing
valuable, were scattered about upon the bloody pavements, while fresh
bundles of them were continually thrown down from the windows above, to
avoid the ﬂames, and caught with demoniac yells by the drunken crowds
beneath. Amid these scenes of disgraceful violence and unutterable Woe,
nine tenths of the once happy smiling town of St. Sebastian was reduced
to ashes; and what has affixed a yet darker blot on the character of the
victors. deeds of cruelty were perpetrated hitherto rare in the British
army, and which cause the historian to blush, not merely for his
country, but for his species."]

“Let the star-spangled banner henceforth advance to the appropriate battle-cry of a war-whoop. Let the American eagle moult its feathers and assume the plumage of a vulture. We repeat, that it is with deep sorrow that we are thus constrained to speak "

We have not the slightest doubt of it. All English writers upon this country are afflicted with the same “deep sorrow;” and from the days of Fearon and Faux, and the old Quarterly Review, in Gifford’s day, we never knew one of them that spoke, unless he were “thus constrained to speak.” The thing is natural enough; Anglo-Saxon brothers are just like any other brothers. It is the duty of the elder always to look after the younger; and though old John may himself

“The primrose path of murderous dalliance tread,”

he is by no means discharged from his natural duty in scoring young Jonathan when following in the same gory trail.

But there seems to us something or other unsound or wrong, something cloudy and obscure somewhere in the whole matter. In short (we don't want to startle the age by the announcement, but we must make it in a quiet way), we believe the essence of Mr. Douglas Jerrold’s furious article is to be found in the greatest humbug of this era of leviathan humbugs; we mean the humbug of ANGLO-SAXON-ISM, and that idea of “kindred nations" which the writers of England are trying to fasten upon this country like a barnacle.

Now, as it happens, the Celtic races are so largely represented among us, that when we add to our population derived from this stock the vast accessions we have formerly received, and still continue to receive, from Continental Europe, a shrewd prophet might urge, that the Celt is here again to grow into ascendency and become the instrument, in the hands of Providence, to avenge the wrongs of the world upon the Anglo-Saxon.

It is perhaps safe to say that scarcely more than one half our people are of Anglo-Saxon descent. Of these, not one third are of un-mixed English origin, and this English origin derived about equally from the Puritans of Cromwell’s wars, and the Cavaliers of Charles II.’s day, make us about as much akin in moral and intellectual character and physical appearance, to the Englishman of the present Anno Domini, as the John Bull of to-day is to the Englishman of the days of King John. Our forefathers were plucked from amid that strange insular ishmaelitish people by the hand of Providence itself, and placed upon this broad continent, as a nucleus around which the representatives of all the races of Europe might rally, to form a new and peculiar branch of the human family. And when the vicissitudes of an ever-changing climate had done its most in bringing out new developments of temperament; and when countless physical and moral circumstances, acting with stringent and consentaneous effect upon scattered communities, had measurably banded us into a homogeneous people, the same Providence, at the expiration,—not of forty years wandering, but of more than a century and a half of trial in the wilderness—called us to take our place among the nations of the earth; called us as a People to be responsible at His bar with other nations and to meet his judgments here and hereafter as he has proclaimed them to the nations, long ere the cosmopolite’s infidel doctrine of mixing up mankind in one general responsibility, was preached by humanitarian bigotry. England need not fear being called upon to hear our “reproach” at that bar, and may heaven in its mercy forbid that our so called kindred blood should make us the joint heirs of hers! The concentrated wickedness of our seventy years of nationhood would not ﬁll one year’s record of her crimes against the human family within the same period of time. Why, put the horrors of this unhappy and regretted Mexican war at the worst, there is not a tale of slaughter, or even an invented story of misery, that comes from beyond the Rio Bravo, to compare in horror with the details of wretchedness which each packet brings across the Atlantic from the fated island, which England has governed for centuries. No Mexican village, where American arms have once attained sway, no province, where American rule has been dominant, has suffered as has each county of Ireland, from Cromwell's day till this. Were every rood of land in Mexico subjected to our rule to-morrow, as Ireland has been to that of England for centuries, neither we, nor any other people upon God’s earth, but that purely selfish Anglo-Saxon race, would fold our arms, while the conquered land withered in famine and pestilence. And it is this race of heartless egotists which in its unholy might has stalked through groaning India, like some fabled monster, breathing fire and desolation, till these became the very atmosphere of its countless victims. It is these Anglo-Saxon scourges of the earth, that dare to hold up America to the reprobation of the nations! But we are getting in earnest and we really did not intend it, for the monstrous humbug of the thing is too gross to provoke resentment,—too ﬂagrantly and farcically impudent to call forth serious indignation.

We must not take leave of the subject, however, without calling attention to the consistency of this ingenuous English writer, who we believe belongs to that amiable class of men, who ﬁgure in “world’s conventions,” and peace societies, and strive in their mission to "keep up the consanguinity of nations," by writing such articles as these we have commented upon, and illustrate them with letters written by the officers of one service, reﬂecting as follows upon the ofﬁcers of another service:

“With mingled pain, humiliation, and disgust, we quote from the Liverpool Albion the following passage; the statement of an eye-witness of the transaction to which it relates :—

1847.—Last night the town of Vera Cruz and the Castle of St. Juan de Ulloa capitulated to the Americans. The terms I cannot ascertain with certainty, but of this I am satisfied, that the latter have gained no honor in the business. It has been a dastardly aﬂhir on the part of the Yankees. Since the 9th inst. they have had Vera Cruz surrounded by 14,000 to 15,000 men, and, though it was only defended by 4,000, one-half of whom were militia, they dared not attack it like men,* but from a distance threw shells into it until one-fourth the town was in ashes, and a great number of women and children destroyed. The Mexicans have shown uncommon pluck. The Americans gave it out that their batteries on shore were to play only on the castle, whilst their ﬂeet attacked it on the other side. They have not, however, had the courage to try their strength on the castle (notwithstanding their heavy ﬂeet), but have contented themselves with ingloriously shelling helpless Vera Cruz.’ ”

[Footnote: *The writer of this precious missive would evidently have had Gen.
Scott imitate Wellington‘s choice in carrying a town by storm, as a more
humane process than bombarding it. Hear the Manifesto of the Spanish
Junta, upon the conduct of the British troops in the city which
Wellington, according to Alison, was too merciful to “shell.”

Oh
wretched day! O cruel night! Pillage, assassination and rape were
pushed to an incredible pitch, and the ﬁre which broke out early in the
night, after the enemy had retired to the castle, put the ﬁnishing
stroke to the scene of woe. On all sides were heard cries of distress
from women, who were violated without regard either to tender youth,
respected family, or advanced years. Women were outraged in presence of
their husbands. daughters dishonored in presence of their parents—one
girl was the victim of brutality on the corpse of her mother! Other
crimes more horrible still, which our pen refuses to record, were
committed on that awful night. and the disorders were continued some
days after, without any efficient steps being taken to arrest them. Of
above six hundred houses, of which St. Sebastian consisted on the
morning of the assault, there remained at the end of three days only
thirty-six."]

The English “liberal,” “peace man,” “philanthropist,” “world‘s conventionist,” “cosmopolite,” &c., winds up his comments upon this letter, by declaring emphatically—

“Certainly in the capture of Vera Cruz a stroke has been inﬂicted upon Mexico; but as certainly that stroke has been A COWARD'S BLOW."

When one of the cleverest and most popular writers in England can, in one of its most widely circulated periodicals, speak thus indecently of a whole people, an American may make up his own mind whether or not our cousin of England does not hate us with a degree of envenomed cordiality, which, when his emissaries preach about the pursuit of arms being a folly and a madness in this age of enlightened progress, should make us remember the wolf’s Jesuitical advice to the shepherd in the fable, and keep our dogs well fed, instead of hanging them, as that silly shepherd did. For ourselves, we do not believe in the delenda est Carthago policy, and we should be very sorry to see a war with England, for we are growing a little too rapidly at present; besides, unless more gradually trained to the use of power, we might misuse it as sadly as she does, and at the same time hypocritically croak the while about the doings of some new stripling State, that is growing up to Anglo-Saxon Thug-hood in the Australian seas.

The article upon which we have commented appeared in a. literary journal, and, therefore, came legitimately within the sphere of our comments in this paper. But the London Times, of May 10th, has a column in a similar strain, and the London Spectator, of May 14th, is equally dire in its denunciations. We repeat, that if each nation is to be held up to the scorn of the world for its political outrages, we are perfectly willing that our seventy years of national existence should be contrasted side by side with that of England for the last seventy years. There is not one count in the indictment which England can prefer against us, for which we cannot furnish ten to convict her at the bar of Humanity. Nor could there be a greater proof of her dotage than her raising such a question as this, when our towns are crammed with foreign paupers, made wretched by her wars and her oppressions—the paupers—her paupers, daily fed by the people whom she so monstrously calumniates. Odious as is the Mexican war to vast numbers of the American people, the well informed among them know, that the mode in which it has been carried on is humanity itself, compared with the brutality of England’s wars; and however we may recoil at the Anglo-Saxon principles upon which that war was instituted, were they ten times as depraved, we could not be justly humiliated, in our own opinion, by the light in which humane and virtuous England pretends with such unblushing effrontery to rebuke us before the nations. --The Literary World Vol. 1 No. 20 - June 19, 1847

"MARDI AND A VOYAGE THITHER."— This is the title of the most delightful book of its kind we have ever read. Our readers will not ha surprised at this unqualified endorsement of it, when we tell those who have not seen it, or heard of it, that the author is Herman Melville; the scenes are laid amongst the romantic islands of the Pacific, and that it is "Omoo" sublimated, if we may use the expression. It is a kind of sea-romance—a picture of all its wild wonders and startling vicissitudes, and this told in an original style, and with a vivid power which reminds one of the most thrilling passages of Carlyle.— It is as if the last named author had suddenly discarded his own field of labor and taken to the infinite sea, so quaintly are the marvels of the ocean painted—so surprising and rich are the pictured contrasts thrown together with prodigal extravagance. We counsel all to procure it without delay who wish to revel in the delights furnished by an imagination that never flags—a power of description that never wearies. It is a retreat from the cares of ordinary life—a Robinson Crusoe stroll through a region identified in the minds of every one from early childhood, with all that is most fascinating in the romance of the far-off isles of the ocean. It can be procured at the Bookstore of Mr. W. T. Berry.

The announcement of a new book from the pen of Herman Melville, is sufficient to attract attention. To those who have read Typee, and Omoo, no book authorized by Melville, can escape a reading. The subject of this work the "Confidence-man" is somewhat out of his usual vein. The scenes are taken from aboard a Mississippi steamer, and includes men and things as they occur and appear between St. Louis and New Orleans. It preserves a fine interest throughout.
--Daily Nashville Patriot - May 9, 1857

Sunday, September 25, 2016

"We part with the adventurous philosophical Ishmael, truly thankful that the whale did not get his head, for which we are indebted for this wildly imaginative and truly thrilling story. We think it the best production which has yet come from that seething brain, and in spite of its lawless flights, which put all regular criticism at defiance, it gives us a higher opinion of the author's originality and power than even the favorite and fragrant first-fruits of his genius, the never-to-be-forgotten Typee."

Saturday, September 24, 2016

In his great speech at the 1844 Jackson-fest, Gansevoort Melville compared the premature celebration of Henry Clay's victory by overconfident Whigs to eating rotten apples, counting unhatched chickens, and trying to enjoy a non-existent dinner:

"This celebration of theirs is pretty much the same thing as if some poor, hungry, starving loafer should cuddle up in a warm corner, close his eyes, shut his mouth, and eat a glorious good dinner—in imagination"

Gansevoort's ridiculous image of the homeless wretch and his fantasy-banquet alludes to a pretty well-known passage from Shakespeare's Richard II, where the banished Henry Bolingbroke contrasts the experience of real physical pain to imaginary kinds of relief which only intensify one's suffering:

O, who can hold a fire in his hand
By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite By bare imagination of a feast?
Or wallow naked in December snow
By thinking on fantastic summer's heat?
O, no! the apprehension of the good
Gives but the greater feeling to the worse:
Fell sorrow's tooth doth never rankle more
Than when he bites, but lanceth not the sore. --Richard II - Act 1 Scene 3

Gansevoort's "hungry, starving loafer" comically personifies Shakespeare's "hungry edge of appetite"; and the "glorious good dinner" is Shakespeare's unreal "feast," both enjoyed only in "imagination."

While Herman Melville was sailing home, his older brother was perfecting and publishing a highly allusive brand of political speech-making. Gansevoort's speech at the Nashville rally on August 15, 1844, as excerpted in the Nashville Union, was criticized in the rival Nashville TennesseanRepublican Banner (September 11, 1844) for comprising "a parcel of borrowed historical illustration." In particular the Republican Banner noted Gansevoort's plagiarism of Sir Walter Scott:

His object evidently was to show off his fine speaking. He glorified Van Buren (who was defeated at Baltimore after innumerable trials) as equal in heroism to James Earl of Douglas at the Battle of Otterbourne! His narration over which locofoco editors have gloated with so much admiration, is all taken with a very slight (and most injurious) alteration and with no acknowledgment, from Scott's preface to the fine old ballad of "the Battle of Otterbourne" in the "Scottish Minstrelsy." But he was most unfortunate in his allusion to this matter. In our edition of "The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," we find that the Douglas to whom he compared MR. VAN BUREN when he introduced the story,—and who raised the cry "A Dead Douglas shall win the field!"—was KILLED BY ONE OF HIS OWN MEN!

"There are that say he (Douglas) was not slain by the enemy, but by one of his own men, a GROOM OF HIS CHAMBER."

So states the historian Godscroft.

We should think there was something in this, that would have prevented our New York orator from dwelling on it with any particular complacency. We have not time to run the parallel out but was not Martin Van Buren killed by his own men? Was not "a groom of his chamber," one of his understrappers, the author of his political death? --Nashville Tennessean, September 11, 1844

Here the criticism specifically refers to the frequently reprinted Dying Douglass portion of Gansevoort Melville's Nashville speech. As alleged, Gansevoort had indeed paraphrased Godscroft via Scott in The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.

(As explained at the Walter Scott Educational Website, the 1802 version is the one in which "Earl Douglas is murdered by a resentful servant." Gansevoort was recalling the battlefield death described in the 1803 and later editions of the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.) Gansevoort was also quoting verbatim from Scott's narrative of "The Battle of Otterburn" in the first volume of Tales of a Grandfather. Only the Tales of a Grandfather version has the exact words Gansevoort reportedly spoke about the "tradition in our family that a dead Douglas" should/shall "win a field."

On a somewhat more positive note, the Nashville Republican Banner did grudgingly acknowledge that in subsequent visits to Nashville Gansevoort had developed a better style of delivery:

"he has decidedly improved in his rhetorical displays, under the criticism of the Press, since he made his first appearance at the Democratic Convention Ground. It is true he still can only skim the surface of questions, but his manner and manners are greatly amended: He has abated much of his preposterous gesticulation and mincing lady's maid tones..."

--Nashville Republican Banner, mis-labeled "The Tennessean" at Newspapers.comEdited then by Donald Macleod.

Friday, September 23, 2016

Over time, the injury that Melville did to his own sense of truthfulness in pursuit of an audience exploded into a higher consciousness of fraud as the essence of literary art. --David Samuels - "A Fish Tale"

In case you missed it like I did, here's a link to the fine online essay "A Fish Tale" by David Samuels in the ultra-elegant Lapham's Quarterly, Spring 2015 issue:

Samuels gets the gist of things right, or close enough in my book. So he should, with Leon Howard's wonderful biography in front of him, and the first
volume of Hershel Parker's biography which he credits, more or less. Herman Melville: A Biography has all the quoted reviews, not to mention a juicy treatment of Melville's veracity problem.

Weirdly though, David Samuels gives Melville's blast at "enormities perpetrated in the South Seas upon some inoffensive islanders" as something "Melville wrote to his brother, before he sat down to write Typee." Say what? That's in Chapter 4 amidst two pages of similarly slanted Reflections on Europeans' Cruelties that were cut in the American Revised Edition of Typee. What gave David Samuels the idea that he's quoting a letter from Herman Melville to his brother?

If David Samuels didn't make up the letter from Herman to his unnamed brother (Gansevoort? Allan? Tom?) just for the Swindle-edition of Lapaham's Quarterly, maybe he read it in a book. About Melville I guess, rather than by Melville. Hmm. Maybe he saw the quoted passage in a book of Melville criticism, couldn't find it in the American Revised Edition of Typee and inferred the phantom letter. Or, maybe the letter does exist and I'm the last to know. That's it, I hope.

Update 09/24/2016: Elizabeth Hardwick slightly misquotes the passage from Typee in the same way that David Samuels slightly misquotes it in "A Fish Tale," omitting two words, of the: "some inoffensive islanders" instead of "some of the inoffensive islanders" as printed in Typee. Not available on Kindle. Guess I'll have to buy back my copy of Elizabeth Hardwick's Herman Melville at Half-Price Books to see what else might be recycled in "A Fish Tale."

Thursday, September 22, 2016

"If you think the book would sell better by having a good deal of practical matter in it, I could enter more minutely into the habits and peculiarities of whales, the process of capturing them and procuring their oil &c; but in my opinion though this might be useful it would not be very interesting to the general reader. Scoresby, Wilkes, and other writers have left scarcely anything new to be said in relation to the practical part of the whaling business..." --J. Ross Browne, letter to Evert A. Duyckinck dated September 16, 1845.

Herman Melville reviewed Browne's whaling book as published by Harper & Brothers in 1846. The text of that review (originally published March 6, 1847 in The Literary World) is available online in another melvilliana post

As advised, Browne did supplement his original narrative with "practical matter" taken from established authorities on whales and whaling. For Moby-Dick, Melville consulted the same books that Browne recycles in his appendix. R. D. Madison says "it's a toss-up whether Browne or The Penny Cyclopaedia was more useful" to Melville as "a shortcut to cetology" (The Essex and the Whale).

Newly digitized and available online From the New York Public Library, this 1845 letter reflects the active support that Browne was getting from Evert A. Duyckinck, then house literary editor for Wiley and Putnam. At Wiley and Putnam, Duyckinck superintended the new Library of American Books project. Ezra Greenspan explains:

By late February 1845 a deal between Duyckinck and Wiley was struck and terms set down, Duyckinck to serve as house literary editor with operating power to choose titles for the Library, to solicit contributions, and to help promote the new works via his pen and his numerous contacts in the press; and Wiley and Putnam to issue the works in attractive but inexpensive fashion both in new York and London. --"Evert Duyckinck and the History of Wiley and Putnam's Library of American Books, 1845-1847" in American Literature Vol. 64, No. 4 (Dec., 1992), pp. 677-693 at 682.

Perry Miller built a page or so from Browne's 1845 letter to Duyckinck:

"an
ex-whaler submitted a manuscript, and though it was miserably written
and required extensive editing, the material was of such intrinsic
interest, and was so truly "American," that Duyckinck spent days working
with J. Ross Browne over Etchings of a Whaling Cruise. --The Raven and the Whale, page 137

Given that much editorial work by Duyckinck, Perry Miller figured Wiley and Putnam must have published Etchings. Edward L. Widmer repeated Miller's mistake in the fascinating book Young America: The Flowering of Democracy in New York City (page 115), placing Browne's Etchings in the Library of American Books.

Browne's experience with competing American publishers was the reverse of Melville's: passed over by Wiley and Putnam, Browne's book was actually published by Harper & Brothers in 1846--the year Wiley and Putnam got Typee, but only after the Harpers (famously, now) had rejected it in manuscript. Eugene Exman in The Brothers Harper (page 293) credits Browne's Etchings as "the Harper book which had influenced George Putnam to publish Typee." (Ah, but there Exman must be thinking of Dana's Two Years Before the Mast, as shown in the letter from Putnam to Duyckinck that Ezra Greenspan quotes in George Palmer Putnam: Representative American Publisher.)

In advising Browne, Duyckinck evidently had urged revisions of content and style. Browne defended instances of coarse language in his narrative as the real talk of sailors, truthfully presented. In the same vein, Melville's review anticipates and answers "fastidious objections" of hypothetical critics:

The scenes presented are always graphically and truthfully sketched, and hence fastidious objections may be made to some of them, on the score of their being too coarsely or harshly drawn. But we take it, that as true, unreserved descriptions, they are in no respect faulty; and, doubtless, the author never dreamed of softening down or withholding anything with a view of rendering his sketches the more attractive and pretty. The book is eminently a practical one, and written with the set purpose of accomplishing good by revealing the simple truth. --Herman Melville, Review of Browne's Etchings of a Whaling Cruise

When Melville wrote that, "fastidious objections" had already been published. The London Spectator, for example, criticized Browne's "unpleasant" realism, and more:

Browne is not a man of genius, scarcely of ability, but a fair enough specimen of the fluent, obtrusive, self-confident, half-educated American, such as one continually encounters in their books of travels. The reflections are in a high-flown sentimental manner; the descriptions of the actual are lengthy and literal. Like some other of his countrymen, Mr. Browne falls into the habit of reporting conversations or dialogues at full length: a very good practice when the persons and topics are of importance, but scarcely needed in the case of whalers with their mere “chaffing,” or pointless jokes, or the quarrels of the captain with his mate and crew. The author is also deficient in art and delicacy. An artist catches and presents the spirit of the lowest scenes, but sinks their material of physical coarseness. Mr. Browne gives them literally as they are; so that he produces much the same unpleasant effect upon the mind as if the reader were actually present—bating the life. The slender interest the book possesses is entirely owing to its nautical subjects—the hardships and excitement of the service, and the characters of the crew, unpleasant as some of the latter are. --The Spectator, Volume 19 - November 28, 1846

I am under obligations to you for the friendly suggestions contained in your letter of the 13th. Fully appreciating the arduous nature of your engagements, I shall make my reply as brief as possible.

Upon reflection, I am convinced that I have been unwise in attempting to “write a book.” It is a task attended by difficulties sufficiently formidable to discourage a more experienced writer than myself. I do not think I am deficient in perseverance; but I fear perseverance in this matter would be a weakness. It is my perfect consciousness of the defects indicated in your letter that discourages me. Were I to obviate them a thousand others would spring up, as if to prove to me that I am entirely disqualified for the task. I regret, therefore, having imposed upon the good nature of my friends in putting them to so much trouble.

There is one consideration which influences me in continuing my efforts to have the journal published. An intimate and esteemed friend of mine, now in Paris, studying the art of painting, is in great distress for want of a small sum of money to enable him to prosecute his studies this approaching winter. He is a young man of uncommon talent and high moral character; and poor indeed, would be the friend, who for want of a little exertion, would see him suffer. $200 would be the means of enabling him to attain eminence in his profession. If I could send him that or even one half of it, I should consider myself fortunate, and to remove any doubt that might exist upon the subject, I am quite willing if I can get that much for the copy-right, to give you his address and ask you to oblige me by sending him the money. This is the only prospect I have of aiding him, for my salary is too small to do him any service. If you knew what a kind and good friend he is, and how great is his distress, I am sure you would second my efforts, if for no other reason than this.

I agree with you in regard to the necessity of re-writing some passages of the narrative, and making alterations in the dialogues. When writing them, I knew there was rather too much roughness and profanity in them to suit a refined taste; and my reason for not making them more polished was that I did not suppose such a work would be read by literary men, and sailors would like it all the better for familiar roughness. However, I am not skilled in these matters, and I submit to your better judgement—merely assuring you that if you think sailors are a refined class of men, or that I have at all exaggerated their profanity, you are much mistaken. That many portions are but indifferently executed, I admit; and profiting by your friendly suggestions I shall do all in my power to make them readable.

As to the number of pages of M.S. or the amount of practical information which I could give, I leave that to be determined by yourself or the publisher. One volume would probably sell better than two—especially two from an unknown writer. I have matter for a volume about the size of Hawthorne’s African Cruizer, which I think is a good size—say 300 or 330 pages of M. S. like this. A friend of mine, who is now draughtsman in the Patent Office, would willingly make a series of handsome illustrations from my rough sketches, which might add materially to the success of the volume. Of course these paintings would cost the publisher nothing. I could have twenty or thirty such sketches as the enclosed, by myself, well executed by my friend.

If you think the book would sell better by having a good deal of practical matter in it, I could enter more minutely into the habits and peculiarities of whales, the process of capturing them and procuring their oil &c; but in my opinion though this might be useful, it would not be very interesting to the general reader. Scoresby, Wilkes, and other writers have left scarcely anything new to be said in relation to the practical part of the whaling business. Graphic descriptions of forecastle life, scenes of cruelty and suffering, and now and then something in the way of observation, would, I think, be more likely to succeed. My opportunities of acquiring practical information were very limited—I had neither books nor intelligent companions to guide me, and the most I could think of making would be an interesting narrative of novel and exciting incidents. I was nearly four months on board a merchantman. An account of my voyage home would show the difference between the merchant service and the whale-fishery, and would perhaps derive interest from the contrast. I am very confident the public know little or nothing of the detestable cruelties practiced on board of our whalers; and to show these in their true colors is my main object. I could give a good deal of practical information in relation to the commerce, products &c of Zanzibar. This would be new, and no doubt interesting to many. Ellis has, in his history of Madagascar, so fully described that island that it would be useless to attempt a practical account of its trade or products. Boteler & Owens have more than I could say about the Comoro Isles. The Azores & Cape de Verdes are too well known to need description. A narrative of incidents would therefore be in the main all I could give.

So far as regards the profits, I would take almost anything.. I have stated to you my only object in desiring any remuneration for my labor. Any arrangement you may think proper to make will suit me.

I have materiel for a very wild and thrilling sea-story; and shall introduce something of that kind if you think it advisable.

In conclusion, I would thank you to call upon Messers Wiley & Putnam, and (if you approve of it) present to them the enclosed note. State the nature character of the work—your opinion of it, your desire to befriend the author; and if you can procure from them a definite and conclusive promise that they will publish it, as soon as I can revise and complete it, then wrap it up and send it to me at the earliest possible moment, and I shall set to work and get it in readiness for publication within a month. You will oblige me by doing this without delay. With many thanks for the trouble you have already taken in my behalf,

I
received a copy of the Literary World a few days since, containing an
interesting account of your excursion to Grey Lock, for which I suppose I
have to thank your kindness. I read it with lively pleasure though not
without a twinge of selfish regret that I could not be of your party.— "Can a man hold fire in his hand by thinking on the frosty Caucasus?”

The
Harpers, to whom I had sent my national poem for publication, decline
it, and advise me to send it to D. Appleton & Co. which I have
accordingly requested the Messers H. to do.— I can not but desire to
have it printed, but have not much hope of it. Melville’s hearty praises
give me more hope than anything else.

I am, My Dear Sir,
Very Respectfully,
Yours &c. John C. Hoadley.

Hoadley refers to the account by Evert A. Duyckinck in the Literary World for August 30, 1851 headed "NOTES OF EXCURSIONS—NO. I / AN ASCENT OF MOUNT SADDLEBACK." The Greylock climb by Herman Melville with his Berkshire friends and visiting literati took place on August 11, 1851, during what Hershel Parker describes as "a second idyll in the Berkshires, fit to rank with that of the previous August" (Herman Melville: A Biography V1.855). Sarah Morewood also wrote of That Excursion to Greylock in a chapter she contributed to J. E. A. Smith's 1852 volume Taghconic.

I don't remember seeing this letter before now, anywhere. Google it?

No results found for "melville's hearty praises"

"Melville" in a letter from Pittsfield to Evert A. Duyckinck has to be Herman. So Hoadley regrets not participating in the ascent of Greylock (he was invited?), reports the rejection of his "national poem" by the Harpers, but takes consolation in the "hearty praises" of his future brother-in-law, Herman Melville.

This John C. Hoadley also turned out to be one of the best friends Herman Melville ever had. Noticing that Herman's sister Augusta Melville listed one of Hoadley's poems ("A Man Should Never Weep?") in her commonplace book on October 7, 1850, Hershel Parker was already wondering:

Not hardly. That is (to eliminate the negatives), the conjectured recital by Hoadley in the hearing of Melville seems likely enough in view of Hoadley's September 9, 1851 letter to Evert A. Duyckinck, which nicely corroborates the view of an early bonding over Hoadley's poetry as well as Hoadley's courtship of Herman's sister. Herman Melville did hear Hoadley's poem on "The Union." Probably on the Fourth of July.

As recorded in Jay Leyda's Melville Log, Melville's future brother-in-law had recited his poem in Pittsfield on July 4, 1851:

“Hermann Melville, our clever nautical story teller, has gone abroad in search of health and new material for adventurous fiction.” --Boston Evening Transcript, October 21, 1856; New York correspondence from "Fidelius"

"Fidelius" wrote letters from New York to the Boston Evening Transcript in the mid 1850's, around the time that Melville's friend Henry T. Tuckerman was also supplying the Transcript with New York correspondence over a different pen name. Writing as "Knick," Tuckerman handled book reviews and literary news, while "Fidelius" wrote more generally about people and cultural events--in Gotham and around the world.

made me think of Melville's bit in Pierre about lighting cigars with sonnets:

Now, the dollars derived from his ditties, these Pierre had always invested in cigars; so that the puffs which indirectly brought him his dollars were again returned, but as perfumed puffs; perfumed with the sweet leaf of Havanna. So that this highly-celebrated and world-renowned Pierre—the great author—whose likeness the world had never seen (for had he not repeatedly refused the world his likeness?), this famous poet, and philosopher, author of "The Tropical Summer: a Sonnet;" against whose very life several desperadoes were darkly plotting (for had not the biographers sworn they would have it?); this towering celebrity—there he would sit smoking, and smoking, mild and self-festooned as a vapory mountain. It was very involuntarily and satisfactorily reciprocal. His cigars were lighted in two ways: lighted by the sale of his sonnets, and lighted by the printed sonnets themselves. --Pierre; Or, The Ambiguities

William Drummond of Hawthornden does not appear in Melville's Reading or
Melville's Sources or the Online Catalog of Melville's known reading. Only stray references to William Drummond in Melville scholarship, it seems. I would
be glad to know of anything at all in print, especially on Melville and those notes of Ben Jonson's talking.

Sunday, September 11, 2016

A previous post gave the text of Melville's 1860 memo from published transcriptions by a distinguished line of Melville scholars including Meade Minnigerode, Eleanor Melville Metcalf in Cycle and Epicycle, and Jay Leyda in The Melville Log. In print, Hershel Parker has reviewed the scholarship on Melville's detailed instructions for publication of his 1860 "Poems" in Melville Biography: An Inside Narrative. Now we can read Melville's long memo of May 22, 1860 in the neat handwriting of his wife Elizabeth Shaw Melville, courtesy of The New York Public Library.

Melville's manuscript book of "Poems" was rejected by at least two different publishers, so Melville never got to enjoy "the publication of a first volume of verses" as he elaborately planned for it in 1860. But later versions of some verses are possibly to be found in Melville's 1891 volume Timoleon, Etc., especially in the section titled "Fruit of Travel Long Ago." In Melville: The Making of the Poet and the "Historical Note" for the Northwestern-Newberry edition of Melville's Published Poems, Hershel Parker suggests that earlier versions of Melville's surviving longer poems "Naples in the Time of Bomba" and "At the Hostelry" might also have graced the 1860 book of "Poems."

In the last year of his life, George J. Adler (1821-1868) wrote from Bloomingdale Asylum to Henry Theodore Tuckerman. Adler and Tuckerman were both old friends of Herman Melville. Tuckerman mentioned his communications from Adler to another mutual friend, Evert A. Duyckinck:

"Poor Adler writes me incoherent notes--the last from Bloomingdale Asylum. His last trouble is the non-appearance of his notice of "Nathan the Wise" in Putnam & he seems to imagine you responsible for the neglect--says you have been kind in the past & he hopes you will do him justice in the future, attributing the non appearance of his article to a difference of theological opinion--you believing in the divinity of the Church & he in a Bhramanic [Brahmanic] theory! whereas, I believe, the notice was too long & Putnam curtailed or omitted it--after paying Adler $15. If, however, you can do, say or write anything to soothe the poor man--who is evidently very ill & tormented in mind--I hope you will do so. I called to say this, but finding you out, send this line."--Henry Theodore Tuckerman, letter to Evert A. Duyckinck dated May 12th [1868]; now in the Duyckinck family papers, Manuscript and Archives Division, The New York Public Library.

In June 1868 Adler received the honorary Ph.D. from the University of the City of New York. Adler died August 24, 1868. Melville and Duyckinck both attended his funeral. The obituary notice in the New York Evening Post (August 24, 1868) ended with this tribute to his reputation:

"Professor Adler was much respected, both for his scholarly attainments and for his personal virtues."

The New York Tribune (August 25, 1868) stated also that Professor Adler

Here's an item I have not seen before. One year before his death at the age of 47, Adler lectured before "a rather small audience" on a subject of probable interest to his old friend Herman Melville:

LITERATURE OF THE MOSLEMS IN SPAIN. Prof. Adler, well known as a German lexicographer and classic scholar, delivered a lecture last evening in the small chapel of the New-York University, on the polite literature of the Moslems in Spain. The lecturer evinced an extensive acquaintance with the spirit and manner of Arabic literature, both in its earlier and later days, especially its poetry, which was illustrated with examples selected from different periods. It was listened to with satisfaction by a rather small audience. --New York Tribune, Friday, March 29, 1867.

Many letters from George J. Adler to George Duyckinck and Evert A. Duyckinck are digitized and available online in the Duyckinck family papers, Manuscript and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. The image below shows the second page of Adler's February 16, 1850 letter to George Duyckinck:

“Our friend Mr. Melville has, I hope, long ago reached his home again safely, and you will have gained from him an account of our voyage and peregrinations in England and London. I regretted his departure very much; but all that I could do to check and fix his restless mind for a while at last was of no avail. His loyalty to his friends at home and the instinctive impulse of his imagination to assimilate and perhaps to work up into some beautiful chimaeras (which according to our eloquent lecturer on Plato here, constitute the essence of poetry and fiction) the materials he had already gathered in his travels, would not allow him to prolong his stay.”

On another page of the same letter near the close, Adler writes:

"I beg you to give my regards to your brother, Mr. Melville and any other friends that you may happen to meet."

Saturday, September 10, 2016

This complimentary review of Melville's lecture on Statues in Rome is excerpted in the second volume of Jay Leyda's Melville Log at page [586]. But if you only have the old Melville Log, you won't know the Boston Evening Transcript called Melville "a pleasant bookmaker" whose forte is "the weaving of sparkling fancies into a web of incident and fact." Or that Melville's audience left persuaded of his "keen eye for the beautiful in art as well as in literature." Merton M. Sealts, Jr. cites the Boston Transcript review on page 23 of Melville as Lecturer, quoting the "pleasant bookmaker" bit without any mention of web-weaving.

Boston Evening Transcript - Thursday, December 3, 1857

MERCANTILE LIBRARY LECTURES. At the Tremont Temple, last evening, a large audience listened with evident satisfaction, to the description of the various sculptures of the Eternal City, by Herman Melville. The pleasant bookmaker proved himself as much at home in the lecture-room as in prosecuting his peculiar vocation, i.e., the weaving of sparkling fancies into a web of incident and fact—the result of extended observation and travel. The lecture contained many trenchant passages, similar to those which have made Mr. Melville’s works so highly prized by the large class whose literary appetite relishes only richly-flavored dishes. There was but one defect about the evening’s entertainment—the subject was too vast for an hour’s consideration; but enough was done, in the time allotted, to convince the auditory that the lecturer had a keen eye for the beautiful in art as well as in literature.

Mr. Melville will be succeeded, on Wednesday evening next, By George W. Curtis, Esq.

Friday, September 9, 2016

The Middlesex digression in this 1855 report from Simon Brown of Concord is especially intriguing in view of the 1846 Middlesex source for the 1850 report on Berkshire farming that Herman Melville was long thought (by Melville scholars from Jay Leyda on) to have co-written or ghost-written for his cousin Robert Melvill.

Published over the signature of state delegate Simon Brown, this tour de force of descriptive writing appears in the 1856 volume of Annual Reports of the Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Agriculture. Simon Brown, editor of the New England Farmer, was then serving as Lt. Governor of Massachusetts. The same report was also published in the New England Farmer for November 1855 under the heading "BERKSHIRE COUNTY CATTLE SHOW." There Simon Brown and his public remarks after those of headliner Julius Rockwell are referenced as "a brief address, by the Editor of the New England Farmer" instead of "a brief address by your delegate." The 1855 address by Julius Rockwell on "The Farmer" appears in the same volume of Annual Reports of the Secretary of the Board of Agriculture, at pages 391-401. The featured speaker would later recommend Melville for a diplomatic office. On March 25, 1861 Julius Rockwell wrote Charles Sumner from Pittsfield on behalf of "my neighbor & friend Herman Melville, author of Omoo--Typee--and many, many, other things which are 'joys forever.'" (Northwestern-Newberry edition of Melville's Correspondence - 684).

Simon Brown's name also appears below the Committee Report for Hampshire. Brown's Hampshire report is capably written and "literary" as well, but it seems driven by a different, moralizing and reforming agenda. I wonder if Simon Brown collaborated with local ghostwriters.

BERKSHIRE.

The forty-fifth anniversary of the Berkshire Agricultural Society took place at Pittsfield, on the 3d, 4th and 5th days of October. All the exhibitions, and all the exercises of the whole three days, including the ball on the evening of the third day, were on the grounds of the society.

The show this year was the first under important changes, and new arrangements of the society. They had purchased and enclosed thirty acres of land, erected yards and stables, laid out and graded a fine trotting course, introduced water in abundance, and constructed a building in the form of a T, each part ninety feet in length, and about fifty feet wide. On the roof is a deck with balustrades, affording space for some ten or fifteen hundred persons, from which position the trotting, the equestrian performances by the ladies, the foot-races, the ploughing, drawing, and all other out-of-door exercises could be seen. So, from this spot, was one of the loveliest panoramas ever presented to the eye. Here the Pontoosuc comes ambling along through the narrow valleys, turning wheels and watering meadows as it flows, and giving examples of animated industry in its babbling course. There flows the Housatonic, enlarged and strengthened by the contributions of the Pontoosuc, and swelling out into the magnitude of a river, gladdening the manufacturer's as well as the farmer's hopes, and fertilising the waiting intervals, green slopes and shady banks, as it winds along. Yonder are the hills on every side. On the north, old Greylock lifts its hoary head, still venerable and august, but young as when the oldest saw it first, dashing the battling elements from its sides, as the lion shakes the night drops from his impervious mane. There are the hills which circumscribe and mark out the amphitheatre of which these grounds are the centre—their sides covered with the deep forest, or dotted with rock maples, black birch, or groups of hemlock, perhaps the most beautiful evergreen of our climate, as well as among the most symmetrical and elegant of trees. Down the sides of these "crystal hills" pour limpid streams, where sheep and milch cows slake their thirst, and, checked in their course, with gathered strength they turn the wheels that grind the corn, or saw the logs that they have nourished many years. And, autumn frosts having touched with icy fingers the trembling leaves, they gleamed in colors of every hue, golden and scarlet, purple and orange, each vieing in brilliancy with the other, and forming a richness of shade and coloring never imitated by man, and probably unequalled in any other clime. Nearer, shot up the white spires of the village churches, while the rich tones of a bell, or the busy hum of industry, occasionally met the ear. Such is but a feeble portraiture of the spot selected by our Berkshire friends, upon which annually to gather, with their wives and children, and keep The Farmer's Festival. A better selection we have never seen, nor a wiser disposition of all the adjuncts which must surround it.

As will be seen above, this exhibition made the forty-fifth of this time-honored and flourishing society—a society which has been instrumental in continuing and greatly increasing the fertility of the lovely valleys and the noble hills which are so beautifully planted throughout the county. An intelligent and prosperous farmer remarked, that he had taken the first premiums in nearly every class of the exhibitions, and was happy to say, that he owed whatever of success and skill he had acquired to the encouragements and influences of this society. The condition of the farms, and the homes of the farmers, bear evidence of the truthfulness of the remark. But, in point of seniority, the "Old Berkshire" must yield the palm to Middlesex. The "Middlesex Society" was incorporated on the 28th of February, 1803, by the name of the "Western Society of Middlesex Husbandmen." It had existed as an unincorporated association, under the same name, from the year 1794. On the 24th of January, 1820, it was changed by an act of the legislature, to that of the "Society of Middlesex Husbandmen and Manufacturers," and subsequent to that time—as the manufacturers had little to do with it—to "The Middlesex Agricultural Society," which is its present title. It has now two lusty daughters, one on each side of her, which bid fair soon to come up to the full proportions of the mother, and perhaps, look a little more dressy and important than the good old dame herself. But one agricultural society now existing within the Commonwealth takes precedence of the Middlesex by virtue of seniority,—"The Massachusetts Society for Promoting Agriculture,"—which was incorporated in 1792, and whose members were made by the act incorporating the Western Society of Middlesex Husbandmen, honorary members of that corporation, and entitled to be present and vote at its meetings.

Wednesday, the first day of the show, was pleasant; the elements were propitious, the roads were good, and the temperature so genial as to invite even invalids abroad,—and the fair opened with the most flattering prospect. The object of this day was to show all kinds of animals, except horses, that were to be exhibited for premiums, and all manufactured articles, implements and machinery.

The number of neat cattle was not large, or in any way remarkable in appearance, and were all of the common breeds, or with only a slight admixture of foreign blood. Swine were also quite limited in number, and the show of poultry was not large. The horses tried the track, as also did ladies and gentlemen in easy carriages. The arrangement of fruits, vegetables, harnesses, counterpanes, quilts, embroidery, capes, collars and skirts, went on in the great hall; peddlers made good speeches, selling their whips and words at poverty prices, showmen banged the banjo and stirred up their poor animals with sharp sticks; while the restless cattle lowed for their stanchions and their evening feed at home! So the day waned away. The departing rays fell with their soft beams upon the varied foliage on the hills, lighting for a few lingering moments, nature's grand cathedral, the woods, into a gorgeousness of beauty, far more splendid than the genius of man has, or ever can devise. Light faded, men, women and children departed; the fandango ceased to move, gloom rested on the hills, few sounds were heard, but the measured tread of the tired policeman, as he went his weary rounds, and night was supreme over the late animated scene.

In the language of one of the "fast gentlemen with fast nags," Thursday, the second day, was a "stunner!" The wind, surcharged with a cold, sticky vapor, moved lazily along, clinging to man and beast, like the shirt of Nessus; but the pluck of Old Berkshire was up, and, rain or shine, they were determined to have a good time. So the horses were brought out, and encouraged into some pretty lively paces, while the spectators shivered and took the dismal droppings of about a thousand indigo-colored cotton umbrellas. The great halls were crowded with men, women and children, who examined and commented upon each article about six times over, and then counted the number of boards in the roof and braces in the frame-work of the building, and wondered if it never would be done raining. But before noon it became evident that rain and cold and mud would get the mastery, and drive them home. The horses dropped their ears and hung their heads in sleepy listlessness, and indicated the strongest disposition to "turn tail to the wind." Men's hats and coats looked seedy and old; the borrowed feathers in bonnets hung heavy and meagre, while skirts were wofully bedrabbled, and clung too close to ankles unused to touch the soil. It was a failure. The elements won the race and triumphed in it, leaving every nag behind, drenched, dismal, and discouraged. Then the hotels, bright parlors and inviting sitting-rooms, opened their doors and welcomed tired visitors to their warm and hospitable precincts, while fitful gusts strewed the ground with leaves or drove the rain against the glass. A darker night than the first brooded over the earth, and the hills and valleys were alike lost in the impenetrable gloom. So the second day closed upon the forty-fifth anniversary of the Old Berkshire society.

But Friday—who says that Friday is always an unlucky day?—Friday morning, bright and early, the sun came flashing over the eastern hills, and sent his warm and cheering beams into every nook of that rich and lovely valley. Up went the mists from the meadows and hill tops, and once more shone the gorgeous dyes on their sides; the cocks crowed and strutted in their harems, with unbounded gusto, and geese and ducks, and pigs and horses, and oxen and calves and sheep, each lent a note so as to render the harmony complete! Children clapped their little hands in delight in view of the ride, and ginger-bread and buns, and music and races that were before them, and so the mothers were happy and the fathers glad. The whole world of Berkshire turned out, the gates were thrown open, and the success of the forty-fifth fair became a "fixed fact."

The first exercise was that of ploughing. The bills stated that the teams would start at "nine o'clock, A. M.;" but it was nearly eleven before the chains were straightened. Thirteen teams ploughed, on a gravelly loam, and did the work moderately well. The ploughs used were all single, and one of them had a cast-iron beam. There was but one pair of oxen which exhibited any thing but the most common training, and they were also the finest in proportions, being attentive to the driver's language, strong and quick in their motions. A pair of black and a pair of gray horses were also well matched and well trained. The black pair we afterwards saw attached to a carriage, where they did themselves and driver as much credit as they did with the plough. Six inches in depth and twelve in width were required. The ground was unfavorable in two particulars—it was ridgy and full of pebbles, so that it would be difficult to make handsome work, even with skilful teams and men.

Then came the riding on horseback around the course, by ladies, and a very pleasant and attractive feature it was—and then the exercises in the great hall. These consisted of excellent music by the Longmeadow band, and an address by the Hon. Julius Rockwell, president of the society. It is a common law in the society, that the president shall continue to act as such two years, and on the retiring year shall deliver the address, and an excellent law it is. He took for his subject, the thoughts of the young farmer, and showed, first, that the lessons and habits of early life are never forgotten. Then he spoke of his initiatory steps into the art and mystery of farming, such as yoking and breaking the steers, and other incidents illustrative of the whole;—and of his choice of occupation a little later. He said a thorough training on the farm was capital to the young farmer, as education is capital to the doctor, lawyer or clergyman. He spoke of the professions, gave a budget of good reasons for not going West, painted the autumnal scenery of New England in glowing colors, spoke of the resources of the county, recited the bounties of the Commonwealth, then most felicitously married the young farmer to one of the handsome, healthy, well-educated, and intelligent daughters of the New England hills, and closed his address. A brief address by your delegate, and another by Dr. H. D. Childs, formerly Lieutenant-Governor of the Commonwealth, followed, and then the beautiful silver plate, amounting in value to hundreds of dollars, was distributed to the individuals to whom it had been awarded by the various committees. Afterwards there was trotting on the course, and the fair closed by a grand ball, in the evening, in the great hall on the society's grounds.

The exhibition of fruits and vegetables was meagre; that of butter and cheese was large, and of the finest quality; of domestic manufactures there was a considerable display of carpets, rugs, hosiery and embroidered work, such as collars, skirts, &c. A few loaves of bread only were seen, and that of quite an ordinary appearance.

The exhibition, on the whole, was one of great merit and interest, though, in some respects, deficient. There was an evident want of taste and arrangement in the articles shown in the hall, and of punctuality in the time of commencing the several exercises of the day; while the choice of location, the construction and arrangement of buildings, the mode of distributing premiums, and the excellent butter and cheese presented, are all worthy the highest commendation.

The moneys received for admission to the grounds were cheerfully paid, amounting to some thousands of dollars, and the farmers and others of the county were apparently gratified with the new arrangements of the society.

In conclusion, I beg to express my belief in the great utility of these associations,—in them as agencies to promote the pecuniary interests of the farmer, to advance him and his family in social position, to encourage scientific investigation, and make the agricultural population that intelligent, thrifty, permanent class upon which our free institutions must always look for strength and perpetuity.

On October 11, 1855 the Pittsfield Sun published a detailed report of the Annual Fair, headed "The Farmer's Holiday." The Sun acknowledged the rain, describing the weather over the first two days as "extremely unpleasant." The fortunate change on Friday is described in relatively plain terms:

"The splendid weather on the third day, and the enjoyment of the immense assemblage gathered at that time on the Exhibition Grounds, was some amend for the disappointment on Wednesday and Thursday."

The Sun article of October 11th also gives names of all prize-winners.

Annual Reports of the Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Agriculture for much of the period that Herman Melville lived and farmed at Arrowhead in Pittsfield are accessible online in Google-digitized volumes from academic and other libraries. A good run of digitized volumes from 1854-1863 and after is available courtesy of the Hathi Trust Digital Library.